Josef Tomáš THE RETURN OF AGNES OF BOHEMIA THE RETURN OF AGNES Josef Tomáš THE RETURN OF AGNES OF BOHEMIA Anežka obálka_EN.indd 1 14. 9. 2015 9:29:03 Dedicated to an unknown guide through the convent of St Agnes of Bohemia in Prague Josef Tomáš THE RETURN OF AGNES OF BOHEMIA Nakladatelství U Veverky Text and translation © Josef Tomáš 2015 Illustrations © Petr Probst 2015 Afterword © Hana Tomková 2014 This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism, review or as otherwise permitted under copyright law, no part may be reproduced by any process without permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. This English translation relates to the second edition of Návrat Anežky Přemyslovny, published 2015 by Ing. Petr Lukšíček, Nakladatelství U Veverky, Sídliště 521, Hrušovany u Brna, 664 62, Czech Republic www.nakladatelstviuveverky.cz The first Czech edition was published 2000 by Carpe Diem Text editor: Alex Skovron Cover design: Jana Průšová Typesetting: Pavel Hora Production: Jan Čermák Printed by XXXXXXXX ISBN 978-80-87836-09-5 Contents The Arrival — 9 The Convent — 15 The Street — 23 The Bridge — 27 The River — 31 The Silence — 35 The Castle — 39 The Church — 45 The City — 49 The Palaces — 57 The Statue — 63 The Departure — 75 The Threshold — 79 Notes and Translations — 87 Afterword by Hana Tomková — 90 Acknowledgments — 93 “… quoniam eam, ut verum fatear, sicut conjugem et liberos et universa bona diligo, cunctisque mortalibus praefero in affectu.” —King Wenceslaus I (fourth king of Bohemia) in a letter to Pope Gregory IX THE ARRIVAL So here I am then … flying in from far, so far away, into this land where the heart of Europe, as he wrote to me, “though hardened now, goes on beating still”. He, a foreigner, whom I’ve never met! And yet, in one long letter after another, he became more and more familiar, until at last this voyage to the unknown takes on the feeling of a true return. A return from where? To where? And why? Long ago now, I learnt 11 not to enquire too much into such things. Doesn’t mystery stare us in the face most of the time, and we don’t know it? Yet not for a single moment do we cease that constant restless turning of our heads to and fro, to and fro … But I’m not there yet: I’m still in the air. From beneath the blue of heaven I can see a snow-dusted landscape, a country that to me is completely foreign— as if it were petrified or dead. The land of Sleeping Beauty perhaps? I wonder if the prince has braved the wood already and woken her from the wicked fairy’s curse; my prince, who even now, somewhere below, awaits an unknown me he has never met. It’s only because of him that I have dared to come so far, where everything, I am convinced, will be different and strange; only for this foreigner, my guide— my fantasist as well—who assures me that he was my brother once! I know nothing of this. But I have come because of him—I care for him so much that if he sends no message for a day or two, I worry that something may have happened … He was waiting for me; I caught sight of him the moment I stepped off the plane. I recognized him, waving at me from the height of the observation deck. Of course, at such a distance my eyes couldn’t be certain—he was just a shadow, 12 waving against the open roof of the building, a shadow in the steel-grey February sky. With my eyes alone, no, I couldn’t be sure, but in my heart there was no doubt that it was he. I had known him only from his letters: first from a few dozen lines, then later—as he took up more space within me, so that words were less and less needed— from all that was left unvoiced. He was really only a shadow, and yet I leaned on him with the confident trust of one who had known him forever. So in the end, when I entered the terminal, it was an encounter of two intimate people. He approached me, kissed me on both cheeks and said: “Oh yes, I was not mistaken, it is you,” and, as in a dizzy spell, a swirl of emotions, it flashed through my mind that to be with him and not to love him above everything would exceed all of my strength! Just recently, all of a sudden, he had written: “Don’t you know? Remember? I am your king. Your brother. So beloved a brother that for the love of him you gave up heaven.” I know nothing of that. They were just words, albeit charming, mysterious. I couldn’t imagine what could have planted such an idea in his mind, the certainty to claim such fantastic things. He’d written next: “Come. You will see. Your heart will tell you that you are at home— that once, ages ago, this city was your home.” So here I am then, close to him in this place. 13 With him—with the actual person at last … Actual person? THE CONVENT I don’t understand why he brought me here. Does he expect that I might recognize something beneath these vaulted arcades and lofty aisles?— where the moulded ribs and window arches are curved upwards as if clasped in prayer, while the patches on the brick and stone showing here and there through the plaster walls know nothing of ever having supported anything of heaven! “Here rests the body in which I used to visit you,” whispers my guide in the silence, pointing to the pavement. 17 I see engraved on the tomb: VENCESLAUS I. REX BOHEMORUM IV. 1205–1253. In a lowered voice he continues: “I once wrote to you that I loved you above everything— more than my own wife and children. Only from one visit to another did I live. Each time I looked into your eyes was for me like looking through a window into eternity. How often I pleaded with you, ‘Do not leave me here, outside of you! Take me there, where I can feel constancy unchanging.’ You found that place, you resided there, once, long ago. And from then on, whatever might disturb that state had no hold upon you any more.” What words! What are they supposed to mean now and here, and for me? Now they are so inappropriate, and here they do not seem in place any longer, even though deep within me they do stir something once known but long forgotten! His voice still muted, he goes on to explain: “Those ancient times were not much different from ours. In seven or eight centuries nothing of any substance has really changed. Even today, as then, hardly anyone knows how to pause, and consider, and calculate, at least once within the span of a lifetime, 18 the ratio of transience to eternity. And yet, there can be no other way anyone could comprehend the message you bequeathed to us here, in this world: That to possess here, means to lose forever there, while to deny oneself here promises unimagined delights without end! I admit, I was among those who didn’t understand. Just occasionally, I would grow a little envious of your striking transparency, your near-permeability, as if your self, at some point in the past, had disappeared into something. But into what? No, I couldn’t understand you at all. I was no monk—only the king who had a duty to govern. I would arbitrate strife and contention and, every now and then, even hang by the neck some wretched felon from the mob, or some nobleman of my kingdom, for crimes so atrocious that this whole country seemed to be growing more and more evil, as if headed for eternal damnation. Every so often I faltered, especially when, by some mistake of judgment, I harmed one who was innocent. Then I would toss sleepless for many a night, fearing that the inevitable hour of retribution might strike me at any moment. It was from you that I have learnt to be sensitive to every human action; 19 to feel how it disturbs that mysterious something, which fills up—as you used to tell me— the void of elapsed time. And then, a short while later, or later still, when that almost imperceptible disturbance has been completely forgotten, suddenly and without warning, the past returns, reinforced more than a hundredfold, and starts blowing, stronger than any storm, into the sails of God’s windmills— which grind between the stones of fate all our intentions and all our plans to dust. Whenever I could, I paid you a visit to find—you being always at peace—peace for myself. I, the one man you were permitted to see during all those years … I admit that for a long time I didn’t understand that rule. Only now, perhaps, I understand a little why I too should have been barred. Yet in spite of that, I allowed myself to be buried here—so that, several times a day, you could kneel down at my tombstone and pray not only for my salvation but for our reunion in heaven. Did you find me there? I myself don’t know, and if you did, it was for the briefest moment, because my concentration has always been like a quick glimpse, little more than a glance into the brightness of the light in which, as you revealed to me, everything reposes.” I remain silent, strangely calmed by his words, although they don’t make a lot of sense to me 20 on this mundane, clamorous side of the world; but in that other sphere, where I too rest for a moment sometimes, anything may indeed be possible.